A Full Metres Below Ground, a Hidden Medical Facility Cares for Ukrainian Troops Injured by Enemy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Sparse foliage conceal the entrance. A sloping timber tunnel descends to a brightly lit welcome zone. There is a surgery unit, outfitted with gurneys, heart rate sensors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets stocked of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of spare clothes. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Welcome to the nation's covert underground hospital. This center opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits 6 metres below the ground. This is the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. And it keeps medical personnel safe,” stated the facility's surgeon, Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

This medical station handles thirty to forty casualties a each day. Their conditions vary. Certain individuals suffer from catastrophic leg injuries necessitating amputations, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. Almost all are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which drop explosives with lethal accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from FPVs. We see minimal gunshot wounds. This is an age of drones and a different kind of war,” the surgeon explained.

During one afternoon recently, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old one soldier, said an first-person view drone blast had ripped a small hole in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade beside me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He collapsed. Then the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the village is destroyed. There are drones all around and casualties. Our side's and the enemy's.”

The soldier said his unit spent over a month in a forest area near the city, which enemy forces has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and drinking water. Seven days after he was hurt, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), taking several hours, to where an military transport was able to pick him up. Upon arrival, a medical staff assessed his vital signs. Following care, a nurse provided him with new non-military attire: a shirt and a pair of pale denim trousers.

A different casualty, 38-year-old a serviceman, recounted a UAV explosion had resulted in concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are ongoing explosions.” A builder working in Lithuania, he said he had returned to Ukraine and volunteered to serve shortly before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as doctors laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A piece of artillery struck me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What were his plans now? “To get better. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces has to protect our country,” he affirmed.

Since 2022, Russia has consistently targeted hospitals, clinics, obstetric units and emergency vehicles. Per international monitors, over two hundred medical personnel have been killed in almost two thousand attacks. The underground facility is constructed from multiple steel bunkers, with wooden supports, soil and granular material placed above up to the surface. It is designed to resist impacts from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram TNT charges released by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which financed the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, declared they would be “critically essential for preserving the lives of our military and assisting defenders on the battlefront.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had implemented after Russia’s invasion.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded personnel had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of air assaults. “We had a pair of critically ill patients who came at 3am. It was necessary to perform a double amputation on one of them. His tourniquet had been applied for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “My career in healthcare for 20 years. One must focus,” he said.

Orderlies transported Mykolaichuk through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other soldiers were transferred to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, walked up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”